Notes: Earlyish dive on a Sunday to do some skills: S-drills; shot a bag; did a decent enough, but slow, ascent. Found the monolith too, and also a metal cross that looked like it was marking something.

Equipment: All own stuff as previously. The battery cap of my Liquivision Xen, came apart as I took the unit out of the tub where I was rinsing it. Also during washing, some fresh water got inside one of my first stages. No idea how as I did not submerge it. Anyway, some things to attend to there.

Notes: This was my second dive with the new dry suit and it was much better this time. I went with Archis and Josh, two local Seattle GUE divers. I paid a lot of attention to buoyancy and definitely got the hang of dumping air from the drysuit. While I’ve not perfected it by any means, it seems like the best strategy is to use both the suit and the wing to maintain buoyancy. Keep just enough in the suit to keep warm and stop squeeze, and do the rest mostly with the wing. For one thing, you can dump much faster from the wing, so you can adjust quickly. In contrast, it comes relatively slowly out of the suit. I dived with the suit valve entirely open. This time I paid close attention and could hear and feel the air leaving the suit when I got my shoulder in the correct position. My weighting was much better too, this time (see below).

The dive was really nice. Very slow and relaxed. There’s lots of colour and life at Cove 2 at night. I saw a pipefish of some kind and lots of nice purple and green flora. Crabs are in abundance, big and small. Some were moving around, often accompanied by a prawn. Others were to be found in very melodramatic poses. I saw one big fellow clinging to an upright pole with his back legs and looking away from the pole holding his claws outstretched in defiance of anything that might approach.

At the end of the dive I hung around playing with my buoyancy while Archis and Josh did some GUE drills. We finished with a very controlled ascent from 5 or 6 metres, easing up while dumping air from the suit, and surfacing to a wonderful view of the Seattle city skyline.

Equipment: I borrowed a tank and weights from Archis. Steel backplate with 6-lb integrated STA weight, and 16 lb of lead on a weight belt. This was pretty perfect weighting. Could also do 16-lb by putting 5 lb in each of the side pockets and 3 lb in each of two trim pockets, but the weight belt was actually fine. It also makes the scuba unit much easier to lift and adjust so maybe it’s a better way to go in general. I need to work on getting the harness more nicely fitted and I should trim the excess length. I also need a slightly longer dry suit inflator hose. My thick woolly socks were good, and also I used the optional in-soles that came with the dry suit so my feet felt pretty snug. I made sure to do the ankle straps fairly tight to avoid excess air down there. I think another ring could be cut off the neck seal of the suit. To hold my light, I used a cheap goodman handle that I got ages ago from Dive Gear Express. It’s pretty flimsy though (cable ties to hold light head in place) so I’d like to replace it. I’d also like a better way of fixing the canister to my harness, though it does fit nice and snugly behind the weight pouch. I dived with the spool in one pocket and SMB in the other, instead of tucking the SMB up behind the backplate pad. I think this is better. Archis suggested putting the spool and SMB assembled into one pocket, which is a nice idea. I’m really looking forward to moving to long/short hose, and to get rid of the AAS being attached to the harness, but I’m going to have to wait until I do the fundies to do that.

Work on dive site map of Clifton Gardens -- Deployed a DSMB to mark the position of the big anchor (the one nearest the Clifton Gardens Wharf), so that bearings could be taken from various positions on the land. Measured the distance, using a long tape, from the anchor to the big buoy in Chowder bay.

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Work on dive site map of Clifton Gardens -- Took (surface) bearing from big buoy to SMB deployed on previous dive (290 degrees). Measured distance from the same SMB to the 4th pole of the Clifton Gardens wharf (26 m). Retrieved SMB.

DM Search and Recovery Workshop -- Did not find weight belt because it was not there; executed a U-shaped search pattern; at one point, I cleverly had two compasses on arm and they interfered with one another; played with lift bags and knots at the end.

Notes: Ciara and Fiona decided to do a nice and easy shore dive in preparation for the Valiant next week. They recruited a few others for a guided shore dive of Gordon’s Bay with Pro-dive Coogee. Simon and I decided to go by ourselves at the same time because it cost less.

Price: Pro-dive Coogee charged $19 for each tank.

Diving: The diving was surprisingly good. There was lots to see and we saw lots; Simon’s a pretty good spotter. An incomplete list might include a Moray eel, lots of little shrimps, rays, a Port Jackson shark and blue groupers. I favoured a carefree plunge so I didn’t bring a camera. We spent some time pestering an octopus and found its stash of toys under a rock. There was an orange golf ball and various bits of plastic and detritus. Elsewhere, I found a canvas shoe and a cheap beaded bracelet, recovering the latter for Eithne who was at a wedding. There was a fair amount of rubbish down there, not enough to mar the dive to any great extent, but it might inspire one to join in on one of those cleanup days at some point.

Notes: Went for a shore dive with Eithne, Simon, Ciara, Fiona and Miriam. Found the dive site on Michael McFadyen’s website. We took his advice and went just before high tide. Spent the first few minutes getting a photo of Simon and Ciara reading a newspaper underwater (before it fell apart), so they could get their photo printed in the next issue. A dramatic thriving seascape would have been a nice backdrop but we had to settle for a monotonous dull blue. Even the otherwise friendly Grouper wouldn’t cooperate and get in the picture. Other than that, the dive was nice enough. Some soft coral. No sea dragons. Cut a bit short because we lost Simon and Ciara. They turned up a while later.

Overall it was a hell of a lot of effort for one 27 minute dive. Next time, we might rent the tanks to do two.